Only Alleyn, Stephanie Vaughan, and a very shaken Nigel remained. The ceiling-cloth had been removed and the weighted sack that had hung from the top gallery lay in a rubbishy heap on the floor. Alleyn picked it up, and threw it into the dock and shut the doors. Nigel stood in the stage door passage. Alleyn looked at him.

"Well, Bathgate," he said. "Never make friends with a policeman."

"I don't think I feel that way about it," decided Nigel slowly.

"You are generous," said Alleyn.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I had told you what would you have done?"

Nigel couldn't answer that.

"I don't know," he said.

"Neither did I know."

"I see."

"Did the thought of it never enter your head?" Alleyn asked him compassionately.

"At first I thought it was Saint and then——" He looked through the wings on to the stage.

Stephanie Vaughan sat there in the arm-chair she had occupied on the night of the murder when Alleyn had first questioned her. She seemed lost in a profound meditation.

"Wait for me," said Alleyn, "somewhere else."

Nigel walked out into the yard. Alleyn went on to the stage.

"Come back from wherever you are," he said softly.

She raised her head and looked at him.

"I can't feel anything at all," she murmured.

He put his hand over hers for a second.

"Cold," he said. "That's the shock. Whenever I have touched your hands they have been cold. Small wonder. Shall I get you a taxi?"

"Not yet. I want to get my bearings."

She looked frowningly at her fingers as though she tried to remember something.

"I suppose you knew what I was up to all along?" she said at last.

"Not quite. I began to wonder, when you said the bruise on your shoulder was made by Surbonadier. I remember how Gardener had stood with his hand on your shoulder when Surbonadier insulted you. I noticed how he gripped you."

She shivered.

"I was afraid then that he would do something dreadful," she said.

"If it's any comfort to you he would have done just what he did if you hadn't existed."

"I know. I was only an accessory after the fact, isn't it? At any rate, not a motive."

"In Surbonadier's flat," Alleyn told her, "I knew how much you were prepared to risk for him. I let you play your part. I let you think you had succeeded."

"Why do you rub it in?"

"Why, to put it rather floridly, because I thought it would help you to hate me and so provide a counter-irritant."

"Oh," she said thoughtfully, "I don't hate you."

"That's strange."

"You were far too clever for me."